Chapter 13
THE CODES
TORQUE
The hour is up.
Sarah’s warm against my chest, Vegas electric below us, and I don’t want to move. Don’t want to break whatever spell has settled over this terrace, over us, over the impossible fact that she kissed me and meant it.
But Costa is waiting. The codes are waiting. The world is waiting.
“Time to go.”
She pulls back. Her hair is still wild from my hands—dark waves falling past her shoulders, the director nowhere in sight. Just Sarah. Just the woman who asked me to stay.
“Time to go,” she echoes. Softer. Reluctant.
I take her hand. She lets me.
We walk through the hotel. Past the last stragglers from the gala, past the slot machines singing their endless song, past the elevators with their brass doors and promise of up, up, up.
Room 2847. Twenty-eighth floor. End of the hall.
This is almost over. A few more minutes, and we’ll have what we came for.
The elevator is too slow.
Sarah stands beside me, her reflection ghostly in the polished doors. The green dress. The pendant. Her hand still in mine, fingers intertwined like this is normal, like we’re just a married couple heading back to their room after a party.
We’re not heading to our room.
We’re heading to Costa’s.
The elevator dings. Doors open. Twenty-eighth floor.
The hallway stretches ahead of us—neutral carpet, neutral walls, doors spaced at regular intervals like cells in a prison. Quiet. Too quiet for a hotel at eleven PM. No ice machine humming. No televisions bleeding through walls. No drunk tourists fumbling with keycards.
Just silence.
My hand drifts toward my hip. The weight of the Glock is reassuring against my side—small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.
“2847.” Sarah’s voice is steady. Mission-focused. The director sliding back into place, even with her hair down. “End of the hall.”
We walk. Our footsteps are muffled by the carpet, but they still feel too loud. Every door we pass is closed. Every “Do Not Disturb” sign is a small red flag.
2844…
2845…
Something’s wrong.
Some part of me, the part that’s survived a dozen firefights and three helicopter crashes and one very bad night in Kandahar, that part knows.
It knows before we reach the door.
I stop.
The electronic lock glows green.
Unlocked.
“Wait.” My arm comes up, blocking her. “Something’s wrong.”
“What—”
My hand closes around the Glock. Draws it. The weight shifts from reassuring to necessary.
“Stay behind me.”
“Levi—”
“Sarah.” I turn. Meet her eyes. “Stay behind me.”
She nods. Her face has gone pale, but her jaw is set. Not panicking.
Good.
I push the door open with my foot.
The smell hits first.
Copper. Iron. The wet-metal stink of fresh blood, thick enough to coat the back of my throat. Under it, something else—cordite, faint but present. Gunshots. Recent.
The room is dark. Curtains drawn. A slice of Vegas neon bleeds through a gap, painting everything in sick yellow light.
I go in.
Clear left. Clear right. Bathroom door open—clear. No shooter. No active threat. Whoever did this is already gone.
“Levi.”
Sarah’s voice. Broken.
I turn.
Costa is on the floor.
“Ray!”
She’s past me before I can stop her, dropping to her knees beside him, the green dress pooling around her like spilled wine. Her hands find his face, his chest, searching for—I don’t know. A wound she can fix. A way to undo this.
There’s no undoing this.
Two shots. Center mass. Suppressed, from the lack of response—no one heard, no one came. Professional work. Clean.
Except for the blood. There’s nothing clean about the blood.
“Ray, stay with me. We’re going to get you help—”
“Sarah.” His voice is wet. Bubbling. Lungs filling with what should stay inside. “Phoenix—”
“Don’t talk. Save your strength—”
“No time.” His hand finds her wrist. Grips with surprising strength for a man who’s dying.
I holster my weapon. Move to the door. Check the hallway—empty. Close the door. Lock it, for all the good that’ll do.
When I turn back, Costa’s eyes have found mine.
“You.” A wheeze. A grimace. “You’ll—get her out?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He turns back to Sarah.
“Ray—I’m so sorry.” Tears stream down her face, cutting tracks through whatever makeup survived the evening. “This is my fault. I brought this to your door—”
“No.” His grip tightens on her wrist. Blood flecks his lips.
“Ray, please—”
“Seven-seven-three-alpha-delta-nine-nine-one-zero.” Each number costs him. Each syllable is a battle. “Say it back.”
“Seven-seven-three-alpha-delta-nine-nine-one-zero.”
I file them away. Lock them in. Backup. If something happens to her, the code still exists.
“Good. Good.” His hand loosens. Falls to his chest. “Burn it down. All of it.”
“I will.” Her voice breaks. “I promise.”
His eyes drift to something we can’t see. Somewhere we can’t follow.
“Tell my wife … Tell her I …”
He doesn’t finish.
The light goes out of his eyes like a switch being thrown. One moment, Ray Costa, deputy director of the NRO, thirty years of service, the man who was going to help us save the world, is alive. The next moment, just a body. Just blood and silence and the weight of everything he didn’t get to say.
Sarah makes a sound. Small. Wounded. The kind of sound that comes from somewhere deeper than the throat.
I give her five seconds. It’s all we have.
“We need to go.”
“I can’t—”
“We need to go. Now. Whoever did this might still be in the building.”
“I can’t just leave him.”
“You have to.” I crouch beside her. Take her face in my hands—the same way I did in the suite, a lifetime ago. “His code dies with us if we don’t move. Everything he gave you—everything he died for—means nothing if Phoenix catches us here.”
Her eyes are wild. Wet. But somewhere beneath the grief, the director stirs. The steel returns.
Something shifts in her expression. Recognition. Partnership.
She looks at Costa one more time. Reaches out. Closes his eyes with trembling fingers.
“Burn it down,” she whispers. “All of it.”
Then she stands. Wipes her face with the back of her hand. When her eyes meet mine, the tears are gone. Frozen. Locked away somewhere I can’t reach.
“Let’s go.”
The elevator is too exposed.
“Stairs.” I take her hand. Pull her toward the emergency exit. “Service stairwell. Down to the kitchen level. They’ll have a loading dock.”
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t question. Just follows.
Twenty-eight floors is a lot of stairs in heels. She kicks them off somewhere around the twentieth floor. I don’t comment. She’s running on adrenaline, ice, and whatever keeps her moving is fine by me.
“Did you memorize the code?”
“Seven-seven-three-alpha-delta-nine-nine-one-zero.” No hesitation. Perfect recall.
“Good.”
“You said you have them too.”
“Backup.” My breath is even. Training. “If something happens to you, the codes survive. If something happens to me, the same thing. Redundancy.”
“Redundancy.” She laughs. It sounds like breaking glass. “Ray would appreciate the operational logic.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
We hit the bottom of the stairwell. Service level. I crack the door. Peer through.
Kitchen. Stainless steel and industrial fluorescent. Night shift skeleton crew—two guys washing dishes, one prep cook pretending to work while checking his phone. No one looks up. No one cares.
“Stay close. Walk like you belong.”
“I’m barefoot in a cocktail dress.”
“Vegas. No one will notice.”
She huffs something that might be a laugh. Might be a sob. I don’t ask.
We slip through the kitchen. Past the dish pit. Past the prep stations. Through a door marked LOADING DOCK—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The desert night hits us like a wall. Warm. Dry. The distant thump of bass from a club somewhere, the eternal heartbeat of the city that never sleeps.
“This way.”
We circle around to the Strip. The sidewalk is crowded even at this hour—tourists, bachelor parties, people who don’t know the world is ending. We fold into them. Two more bodies in the endless flow.
“Taxi.” I spot one idling near the valet stand of a neighboring casino. “Come on.”
We walk. Fast, but not running. A couple leaving a party. A woman who’s had too much to drink. A man helping her into a cab. Nothing unusual. Nothing to remember.
The taxi driver doesn’t blink at her bare feet or my disheveled appearance. Vegas. City of sin. City of none of my business.
“Henderson Executive Airport.”
“Long way.”
“Not asking for commentary.”
He shrugs. Pulls into traffic.
Vegas falls away behind us. The neon fades. The stars emerge, cold and distant and indifferent to everything that’s happened tonight.
Sarah sits rigid beside me. Hands folded in her lap. Blood drying on her fingers—Costa’s blood, dark against her skin.
“He died because he was going to help me.”
“He died because Phoenix murdered him.” I want to touch her. Take her hand. Something. But the ice radiating off her says not now. Says don’t. “That’s not on you.”
“I brought this to his door.”
“And he was going to walk through it with you. That was his choice. Honor it.”
Silence. The taxi hums. Vegas becomes desert becomes darkness.
“Burn it down.” Her voice is flat. Distant. “That’s what he said.”
“Then that’s what we do.”
“All of it.”
“Every last byte.”
She turns. Looks at me. Her eyes are dry now. Empty in a way that scares me more than the tears did.
“Seven-seven-three-alpha-delta-nine-nine-one-zero.”
“I’ve got them.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
She turns back to the window. The queen pendant catches the passing headlights—silver flash against her throat.
Behind us, Costa lies cooling in a hotel room that will become a crime scene by morning.
Ahead of us, the desert. The aircraft. The team. The mission.
Phoenix.
I don’t reach for her hand. Don’t offer comfort she doesn’t want.
I just watch the road, memorize the codes, and plan how to burn it all down.